ANALYSIS OF WHY ARE ANIMALS UED IN RESEARCH
In the article Why Are Animals Used in Research? , the author highlights the issue of the importance of animal research on human beings. He claims that animal research brings significant effects on preventing infectious diseases that can cause death on human beings. Words such as healthier, eliminating and contributed reflect his tone of supportive as he stressed the positive elements.
The author is writing this article to inform the reader why animals are used in the research. He is also trying to convince the people in the research field to continue using animals as a research study based on several reasons such as most animals experience only minimal pain or brief discomfort when they are used in research and only a small fraction of animals do experience acute or prolonged pain during experiment. The intended audience is the public and also the group of people who involve in the animal research. He wants the reader to know why animal should be used in the study in order to find a cure to save human beings.
The author then presents two arguments to support his own point of view on this issue. His first claim that by studying animals, the technique is a way safer and more effective instead to use it first in human beings. This argument however based on society deems or in other word, particularly opinion. The second claim that it is impossible to replicate human beings hence animals offer experimental models. He stated some biological facts, however there is no source that supports the facts. He did stated that some animals have biological similarities to humans for particularly good models for specific diseases, expecting the author to include an support such as research findings or case studies.
The author has supplied us with several types of supporting details throughout his article. He uses example, research finding and statistics to support his argument. He also makes extensive reference to the 1988 Animal Welfare Enforcement Report by the Department of Agriculture. However, there are many flaws in his way of reasoning it. He gives us an example but he is not giving us the sources of the example. As we did not know his background, so we cannot assume he is an expert in this animal research field. For instance, in paragraph 5 he is also giving us many statistics but none of them come with the sources of the statistics as he keeps using the word estimated. So in our point of view, the data may be just come from him because he do not mention the sources of the statistics thus making it a weak support.
In the terms of relevance, we think that all the supports in this article is relevant as they are directly related to the author’s argument. The author’s argument about most animals experience only minimal pain when they are used in research has objectivity as the support consist of research finding from the Department of Agriculture. However, other supports seem to be subjective because they are only based on the writer’s personal thought with unsupported opinion. We also think that the article is less of completeness as the author does not provide us any adequate support and overcomes the opposing point which is why animal are not used in research. Therefore, the article is lack of credibility and many of the author’s points can be questioned of.
The author generally appears to be inductive in his reasoning, as he provides all the specific statistics to support as many of animals coming from breeding colonies in the United States as these animals being bred specifically for research and other being acquired from pounds. In paragraph V the author includes several estimated data, percentage and also year that lead to a logical generalization.
The stated main idea can be identified on the very first sentence of the article, that is; human beings use animals for a wide variety of purposes, including research.
Based on paragraph VII, two inferences can be made. Firstly animal research solved the problem of experiments related to diseases. Second, animal research alleviating human suffering. In conclusion to this paragraph, animal research contributes to a large scale of recovering human health. A relatively small number of laboratory animals may experiences acute pain during experiments, but is justified by the magnitude of the problem are designed to solve.
In summary, although the author managed to show some validity and credibility in some of his claims, his overall argument about why animals are used in research are weak and unsound due to the lack of strong support. His article is also lack of completeness as he does not provide an adequate support to overcome the opposing thought about this issue.
